The usual string instrument such as a guitar, mandolin, banjo, is basically a one voice play instrument. While one hand plays on the individual strings, the other hand, i.e. the left hand, controls the acoustic range of the instrument by varying effective string length. These instruments therefore exhibit limited musical capabilities, compared for example to a keyboard instrument, such as the piano.
Workers in the music instrument art have appreciated the desirability of enhancing the musical capability of string instruments, and over the years have made various suggestions bearing on the rationale of this invention.
One such suggestion has been to mount two necks on the base of a stringed instrument. Each neck is provided with a bank of strings, the two banks of strings are played alternatively, not together. The player shifts both hands from one playing neck to the other (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 2,222,959).
A variation on the provision of multiple, alternatively played necks integral with the instrument as a whole, is provision of a support member corresponding to the sounding board base portion of a guitar and a multiplicity of stringed neck assemblies alternatively attachable to the support member. (See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,538,807).
In terms of the objective of this invention to provide a two voice string instrument, expedients such as alternatively played multiple neck string instruments or alternative removable necks for (a single neck) string instrument can be criticized for their failure to consider the very possibility of two voice play.
The advent of electronic amplification has allowed the art to dispense with the sounding board feature of string instruments through electronic amplification of the sound made by the strings. By and large the art has not also fully appreciated that electronic amplification will permit the playing hand to employ a tapping or drumming mode of play, and while doing so, also control the pitch according to where on the strings the playing hand taps; the player may tap appropriately along the length of a fretted neck. In total the electric guitar is capable of one hand play, leaving the other hand free to play a second electric quitar device at the same time, creating thereby a two voice instrument.
The concept of a two voice play construction in a stringed instrument has been suggested by the art. (See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,742,114). However so far as is known to the inventor herein any electric guitar string instruments intended for two voice play have, heretofore, been ill-adapted to such purposes.
Significant to the genesis of this invention is that electric guitars do not require (for acoustic purposes) an enlarged base. Stick-like stringed instruments have, in fact, been suggested to the art (see for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,833,751).